Nineteen years ago this week, Karyn White was getting “Romantic” with the Billboard Hot 100, looking glam at number one. The song was White’s biggest mainstream pop hit and also her fourth #1 showing over on the R&B chart, following “The Way That You Love Me,” “Superwoman,” and “You Saw It,” from a couple of years earlier.

White wrote and produced “Romantic” with in-demand hitmakers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (Janet Jackson, Human League, New Edition). The fedora-sporting Flyte Tyme fellas handled production duties on the majority of the singer’s second album, Ritual Of Love, and White would go on to marry Lewis the following year (the couple had a daughter, and eventually divorced).

“Romantic” remains a standout track within the decades-long Jam & Lewis discography, alongside such gems as New Edition’s “If It Isn’t Love,” The Human League’s “Human,” Mary J. Blige’s “No More Drama,” and most notably, a huge chunk of Janet Jackson’s hits. And sonically, “Romantic” really could have been an outtake from the sessions for Janet’s Control, with the song’s punctuating keyboards particularly reminiscent of “When I Think Of You.”

The music video for “Romantic” was directed by famed fashion photographer Matthew Rolston, a clip which appears partly inspired by Cabaret (or a cabaret setting, anyway). As in the album and single cover art, one of the stunning outfits White wears in the video is a simple black dress accessorized by a string of white pearls (in the video, so, so many strings!). My very favorite part of “Romantic” is the breakdown — “If you want romance, you got to work it every chance you get” — which arrives around the 2:50 mark:

White’s next single, “The Way I Feel About You,” missed the top ten, stopping at #12, but did reach #5 on the R&B chart.

After a disappointing follow-up to the successful Ritual Of Love, 1994’s Make Him Do Right, White disappeared from the music scene. She returned to the recording studio over a decade later and completed a fourth album in 2006, but it was shelved. Two tracks did make it onto the her hits compilation the following year, Superwoman: The Best of Karyn White. 

Today, White reportedly works as a real estate agent and interior designer in Sacramento, California. It’s a shame we haven’t heard her seductive voice singing romantic songs of love for so long now.

Purchase Karyn White – “Romantic” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.